Responding Directly

102 12

Starting today you might notice something different in the comments of the blog. We’ve created a plugin for WordPress that allows our blog authors to reply directly to a comment and have that reply appear next to the original comment. This should minimize many of the “@username” responses in our comments.

Comment Response

Currently, this feature is only available to the blog authors (you’re used to seeing their responses in red). We’ve debated opening up the option to everybody (and we may still), however, the question we always ask is, “Are we trying to replicate too many forum functions?” The other fear is that threaded comments would turn into this:

First!

As for you WordPress geeks out there, we plan on releasing this plugin along with one other very soon. More on that in a bit.

Comments are closed.

102 Comments

12 Author Replies

  • Nah don’t open it to the public, not a big feature and will cause many annoyances.

    Thanks for adding this since I’m sure 90% of us just scroll through looking for Red comments to read and when we do find them it’s a bit of a work to go back to “@whoever” and find out what “@whoever” asked.

    So thanks for this feature.

  • yea i could see that first thing happening a lot if you opened it to everyone, keep it to the authors and things will be fine

  • GREAT idea doing it the way you said, w/ only the forum poster (HOPEFULLY ANYONE at Sony actually) can respond to a post. If everyone could reply, your whole first page would be people responding to the first comment.
    I would also like it if you could view only the RED replies from Sony, or tag them. With the new multi-page layout, insightful comments from David Jaffe were overlooked b/c they were buried down there on separate pages.

    • See that Jaffe post is a great example. If the post goes up while he\’s at lunch, for instance, we may already be into the second page of comments by the time he gets back.

      And when it\’s someone like Dylan Cuthbert (in Japan), well he may be asleep when we actually push the post live. The goal is to get those Red Responses up close where more of you will see them.

      Thanks for the feedback.

  • Responding directly? Lets just focus on responding more frequently.

  • Great idea guys and great execution. Keep it closed. Though a button somewhere to view all the posts with official responses would be pretty nice.

  • Nice. You guys are doing a great job in getting involved with the community.

  • Hey, why not just have a reply function that will put the original text inside a quote? That way you don’t have to use nested views but the readers don’t have to scroll their fingers off while reading a discussion. ;)

    Btw, OT: is there a suggestion box at this place? Not only for the blog but for the whole shebang, PS3, PSP, whatever. You need one, I have ideas that will make you rich. :P

  • I think the bloggers should just be able to use the plugin…i think if there is so much to talk about, there is a forum that people can talk on.

  • Jeff,

    This is a very positive thing. I think it’s a great idea. Making it simpler for the blog authors to reply directly might even encourage them to post replies more often! Nice work.

    We all try to look for those RED replies because they are “straight from the horse’s mouth”

    I agree with some of the other replies that this should not be opened up to everybody. It would however be nice to know when someone has replied directly to your posting. Some sort of plugin that allows for a direct reply to generate an email to the original poster. So, if someone replies @Mort – I get an email to say that I got a direct reply, whether that came from a blog author or another blog member.

  • awesome. It was hard to figure out what you guys were replying to sometimes! This will surely help!

  • I look forward to seeing the wp plugin, I think threaded replies are easier to read and would like to use it on my blog :)

  • Very cool! I agree with above don’t open this for the public to use.

    Now if we could only get some real “Direct Responses” other than marketing PR BS, specifically regarding In-Game XMB (Messaging).

    Coming in 2008 is a very weak response to the most desired feature for the PS3. I have to believe internally there is a month to shoot for, if for some legal reason or otherwise this cannot be discussed I would appreciate that openness. All I can say is it better make it out “sometime” in 2008, that’s a big release date to miss!

    Rather then saying the same stuff over again and wasting time releasing useless features such as the voice changer and info board, that is rarely updated in time to be of any use. I am sure we would all prefer some direct talk minus the PR.

    This may not be the best place to air my frustrations but the title “Responding Directly” got me thinking and served as a good segue.

    Anyway, glad to see the blog gets regular useful updates this will help a lot in seeing comments and replies quickly.

  • Thirteenth!

  • Wow, up bright and early aren’t we?

    Glad to see you guys are still fine tuning- I will especially appreciate this feature! :D

    And, nah, don’t open this to the public- while that example you gave is a very amusing one, what’s more likely to happen is arguments and flamewars and, quite like what was mentioned, forum-ness. If people want to participate in a forum playstation.com is only an address ending deletion away. It would be best to make sure that this stays focused on the blog rather than the inevitable petitions users would create.

  • I wish I could “respond directly” to people on my PSN Friends’ List while in the middle of a game.

    8-core CELL CPU + no in-game access to Friends List = a big “WTF?”

  • Only let blog authors etc use that feature. It just wouldn’t be as professional, since you know how the internet is, it’s bound to get abused.

  • I’ll second that^^

    The PS3 needs some more basic features. Plus the PSP needs some more news! Also please comment on the rumors that the 80GB PS3 is going to be dropped, as well as what Sony will do with the PSP Phat for those hold out users who keep drying over the fact they wont get Skype.

  • Great!

    Please spread the word to devs who may not know that lack of 1080 support if preventing people from buying certain games:

    http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&thread.id=1543693&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

  • Oh please don’t open it to the public. Though, to be honest, I did made a WordPress account for the sole purpose to be able to make a comment in a blog entry a while ago.

    It can get a little crazy without anonymous users, also. Remember that one blog where people constantly complained of “in-game XMB,” or rather the lack thereof? Yeah….

  • I like the idea…but why not just have a quote option? Works well with forums.

  • What happened to the threespeech links on the sidebar?

  • Great addition. This way Blog authors can respond to us easily!!

    Care to tested it on me? :P

  • great idea guys!

    Though definately don’t open the feature up to the public though, it will really get out of hand. (one time I was taking this course at college and we had an online “discussion” forum with the feature you mentioned and some of the guys decided to see of there was a limit to the number of sub-levels you could make. There wasn’t….. yeah.)
    Also, maybe you could make it so the user who’s comment was replied to could reply to the Sony person’s reply. (but only that comment)

    Also, another idea I had was to make some form of “rich comment” feature for long-time/reasonable/non-insane users. Like let us use a wider range of html code like {a href=””} or {font color=”” face=”” size=””} etc. I don’t know if that would get out of hand, but if you granted the ability to use that feature only to reliable, long-time users (such as myself…) then I don’t think it would be too much of a problem, and it would be really cool to use some “special effects” against certain crazy users (*cough* gamesblow, *cough* Loucifer).

    Anyway, it’s good to see that you guys are tinkering with the blog and adding features like you are doing with the PS3 and PSP. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this blog is probably one of the best ideas you’ve ever had: to let your customers talk to you and you ACTUALLY LISTEN!!!! Thanks for doing so…

    • We\’ve got quite a few more things on the way in 08 to help make the blog more useful to you, and to make it easier for you all to be heard.

      HTML scares me though, if we had something as simple as pic embedding in the comments – we know what would happen.

  • Wow very nice addition to the Blog SONY, very cool and i ROFL’d at the 2nd picture of your post Jeff :P

  • I love it. I agree with not opening it up to the public as well. Thanks for all the hard work.

  • TheHakku said:

    “…It can get a little crazy without anonymous users, also. Remember that one blog where people constantly complained of “in-game XMB,” or rather the lack thereof? Yeah….”

    just ONE blog???!!!

  • Sorry to go off topic but any news on Home? GDC maybe?

    just a little hint the last thing anyone has heard was from the president on SCEE saying it was on track for a Spring Release.

    • When we\’ve got a Home announcement, I promise you – it won\’t be made in the comments area.

      As far as GDC is concerned, when we get a little closer, I\’m planning on letting you know what we here at the Blog are planning on doing, so we can focus on what *is* happening as opposed to speculating on what *might* happen. Just a lesson I personally learned from CES this month.

  • nice.. i would like the Plugin code for sure to use with my blog

  • @ jeff
    I wasn’t suggesting that you enable the {img} tag. (NOOOO!!!) I’ve seen what happens when someone forgets to disable that….
    I was just saying like small, purely text editing stuff like different colors and maybe fonts and a small range of font sizes.
    Maybe it would encourage people to be a little less dumb because doing stuff like posting 1043 lines of “I WANT INGAME XMB!!!” would mean they’d never be able to access those extra features. Just a thought. Either was, I would still like to suggest that you make it so that the user who’s comment was replied to could reply to the reply. (like use whatever cookie/verification software to generate the name in the comment “header” to execute a subroutine like “If $username=thingg AND $commentauthor=thingg AND $replyexists=true THEN CALL enablereply()” )

    • I\’ll talk to the dev. team. In the meantime… you\’ll just have to keep coming back. I get paid by the page view.

      (no, seriously, I don\’t.)

  • Nice new feature.
    Now, if we can only rate / flag / ignore those that spam with off topic comments about:
    – in-game XMB (we know they’re working on it. shut up already)
    – spam (If I see one more “lostps3.com” post…)
    – Home (We know it’s coming. I guess it’s so ungodly important to people who need to get a virtual life since they don’t have one in the real world)
    – Upscaling (Get a new TV that doesn’t suck. Problem solved.)

  • My PS3 HDD seems to have Ghost data, when i installed the Burnout Paradise demo, i renamed the information within it…in order to sort the demos into folders, and whilst playing the game it froze…and when i reset my PS3 there is a folder named unknown…which says it contains 1 file…but its empty…and i cant delete the folder..HELP!

  • Great feature, I don’t think you should open it to the public. It might be abused heavily. Think about how big a “First” post can get.

    Either way it’s nice to see this feature, hopefully it will motivate more authors to respond. Instead of mainly just you Jeff, don’t get me wrong I appreciate that you take time to respond. I wish others did as well.

  • Responding Directly, eh? Then respond directly to this.

    Why has HOME been Delayed so much and when is the real release date and why hasn’t there been any amount of noteworthy news concerning it?

  • I like it! I think it’s best to not allow readers the ability to reply, but it’s a great idea for the authors.

    Any word of the release date of the PS cards?

  • Keep the Reply Function to admins and blog authors only. They have the best responses because they know the facts. Keep this blog for information, NOT for debate. There are plenty of other sites for that.

  • @jeff
    I just hit “refresh” about 157684 times. Can I have a cut of your check? :-D

  • Letting users post replies could be done in a way that doesn’t result in a long string of indented comments. This could be done by letting users select what comment they are responding too and having a small note be generated that says something like “responded to in Comment #63”, but the comment is still placed at the end of the list. This way people don’t have to scroll through all the pages to see if somebody addressed their question and the overall structure won’t be abused.

  • A feature that could be useful, is a button that lets us link to the comment for example.

    @ 35 RandomEarthling I agree

    Instead of having to use html^

  • Great imporovements, should be much easier to see the questions the developers answer, rather than having to scroll back and forth.

    Random question.. any plans or thoughts on implementing the Playstation.Blog into the XMB in the Network section? I think it would be neat if it lit up or something when there was a new blog post. Sorry, but that information bar isn’t doing it for me.

  • Nice addition.

  • @ C-h-a-o-s

    I admire your knowledge of HTML coding

    I’ll leave all the fancy pants words and computer learning to esteemed men such as C-h-a-o-s and our virile SMM Jeff

  • You should reply to every comment!!! 24/7! JOKE! ;-D

    +Why are there no more PS3’s that can play PS2 games on it anymore???
    (i.e U.K 60GB+U.S 80GB units gone?)
    Thats the only thing thats really annoyed me about the PS3.

    +How long does it take to convert a PS1 game to a PSN PS1 download game?
    Is it difficult to do? Seems to take ages for a PS1 game to get to PSN??? Just wondering ;)

    +Would love my PS3 to play PS1+2 import games on my U.K PS3.
    Wonder if Sony could change that with a update?Would be COOL! ;)
    Great Blog anyway;)

  • Nice addition. Any chance you could phone up your friends in SCEE and teach them this stuff?

    Would go something like this:

    Hey SCEE, how’s it going?

    Wow, that bad?

    Your customers don’t understand everything your going through, they slate you daily on your PR company’s “semi-official blog” and in your EU forums?

    Well, don’t mean to tell you your job and all but have you, you know, tried telling them whats up?

    Yeah, talking to them.
    …..
    No, its really cool, go look at our blog for the US guys, they ask questions and we respond DIRECTLY in easy to see red posts. And the US customers seem to like it! Try it, we’ll send the code.

    No problem.

    SCEE aren’t listening to us so could you give it a shot?
    Cheers, will buy you a drink if your ever in Glasgow.

  • LMAO NICE! Cool part? I run an indie dev studio (Team KAIZEN — http://www.teamkaizengames.com) and we are redoing our entire site so it is a word press site—yay for awesome plugins LOL!

    Jeff: can you make it so your comments are still red? It is cool you guys are commenting directly but it is tougher to find your replies if they don’t stand out!

    • They should be. Hit refresh, and if they don\’t pop up, tell me what OS/browser you\’re using. We tested this feature out, but it *is* still day one.

      And soon important people will be using it (read: game developers).

  • Seems like a good idea to me.

  • Ahhh, honest question Jeff, if I add you on PSN would you find time in your SMM schedule to hit up a few games of any FPS with me?

    • Yes. When I\’m not playing Rock Band, that is. We [roommates] play *a lot*. Oh, and when I get my internet up and running in the new place. Which is taking forever.

  • I come to this blog for sony news and to ask you questions not to converse with other bloggers so I like the format the way it is.Sony already has forums at http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation which I hope people high up in sony look at see

  • Don’t open it to the public… just one reply from the authors, make it an open and shut case. We aren’t trying to discuss anything here even though everyone has their opinions, being heard is enuogh!!

  • So wait your telling me u actually get paid to blog and play games?

  • Nice new feature.

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